This incredible expansion in the volume, velocity, and variety of data is the engine driving the torrid pace of innovation that we experience today. Companies everywhere strive to understand more about their customers through data, and are then trying to use that data to better service their needs. This data, when coupled with analytics and new applications that can be developed quickly and then easily updated, drives competitive advantage. Enterprises that harness the power of this data with new applications better and faster than their competitors will lead their industries.

However, an inordinate percentage of IT budgets is spent on maintenance to “keep the IT lights on” rather than on innovation.

Companies spend as much as 80 – 90 percent of their IT budgets on maintenance, according to Columbia Business School Professor Rita Gunter McGrath.

A Forrester Research survey of IT leaders at more than 3,700 companies found that respondents estimate they spend an average of 72% of their IT budget on maintenance, with a mere 28% dedicated to new projects.

Staying competitive in today’s market means embracing the reality of having to do more with less. Even for those companies whose IT budgets are expanding, , they are certainly not expanding at a rate commensurate with the pace of demands for digital innovation through mobile, the Internet of Things (IoT), new applications, and the whole host of other needs being thrown at IT departments from their business units. Just think of how much more you could do with 20 percent, 30 percent, or more budget by lowering your core IT infrastructure costs while adding a more flexible database management system and application platform that enables the power and speed of DevOps to deliver digital business initiatives.

With an OSS relational DBMS and application platform that can be deployed in a wide range of environments from virtualized and container-based to hybrid clouds, you are in a position to fund more digital business innovation initiatives and get them done quickly. You can work aggressively with the Line of Business and the Chief Marketing Officer to prioritize projects and become more relevant to the business.

A key step in the journey to digital competitive advantage and a higher level of customer engagement is to partner with a leading OSS platform company like EnterpriseDB® (EDB™) for the DBMS and Red Hat for application platforms and cloud infrastructure. Let’s take a look at these platforms more deeply.

EDB Postgres

EDB provides everything you need to adopt Postgres in the enterprise to transform core IT at scale at the lowest risk. The EDB Postgres™ Platform is the first integrated open source-based operational data management platform that brings together all of the components required for managing structured and unstructured data in a federated model. The platform enables integration across different databases, but it also supports combining unstructured data from NoSQL solutions with corporate, transactional data in structured, relational systems. Migration and Management tool suites as well as 24×7 support, services, and training round out the additional capabilities that help DBAs and developers to be more productive. The EDB Postgres platform is available as a subscription, inclusive of all data management solution components, Postgres support, software upgrades, and access to EDB’s partner ecosystem. EDB Postgres software can be deployed on bare metal; virtually, including container environments; or in a public, private and/or hybrid cloud environments.

Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform

Red Hat® JBoss® Enterprise Application Platform (JBoss EAP) is the market-leading choice to deliver enterprise-grade security, performance, and scalability in any environment–on-premise, virtual, private, public, or hybrid cloud. A fully certified Java EE platform, JBoss EAP gives you a single platform to quickly develop and deploy applications serving a wide range of requirements spanning traditional to new web-scale, microservice applications. And by using JBoss EAP with common DevOps tools, you maximize development and operations teams’ productivity, decrease quality issues, and get new apps out to market fast. JBoss EAP gives you the competitive edge you need in today’s rapidly changing business environment.

EDB Postgres and Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform together provide deployment flexibility to deliver a total application and data platform that transforms IT and drives digital business.

Faster Development and Deployment

Many organizations look to build out a platform to deliver new digital components for their businesses. EDB Postgres is designed to support these initiatives both financially and technically. Red Hat has answered that need with its IaaS layer OpenStack, Red Hat Enterprise Linux , Red Hat JBoss, and OpenShift. The Red Hat–EDB partnership provides a complete set of capabilities to enable a true digital enterprise, for example:

Large financial enterprises are building out new infrastructure fabrics in support of digital business. A growing number of these initiatives are built upon Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat OpenStack, Red Hat JBoss, along with and EDB Postgres to provide an agile on-demand platform to allow new digital business efforts to drive competitive advantage in their chosen markets. The flexibility of the cloud infrastructure, open source, and subscription product offerings allow these firms to accelerate projects to deliver digital business experiences. Some of the benefits highlighted using this open source stack include visibility into applications and database performance and security; self service development and deployment of applications with associated data sources; and the ability to integrate a wide range of applications and data into new digital business applications to deliver superior user experiences. These types of experiences include ability to see a holistic view of your accounts, tailored product and service offerings to your specific financial needs and wants based on analytics of your interactions with them (with opt-in, of course), and optimized fraud detection that alerts you only when necessary.

In the SaaS world, Infor announced (in 2014) a partnership with Red Hat and EDB to deliver its Infor LN enterprise resource planning software on an open source stack. This open source stack required enterprise-proven operating system, middleware and database. Infor chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat JBoss Middleware and EDB Postgres. This open source stack delivers value in reducing risk of time to solution and downtime; flexible deployment options including container and cloud choices such as Docker and OpenStack; and the ability to integrate applications and data across these deployments and with external applications and data as well. Learn more here.

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Just keeping the lights on is not good enough. IT must co-lead this transformation and not let this opportunity slip away to shadow IT and LOB-driven public cloud projects or worse, to competitors.